RAHM OUTSPENDS OPPONENTS BY 12 TO 1 AND CAN’T GET 50% OF THE VOTE

I can’t believe the endorsement of our savior – Barack Obama – didn’t push Rahm over the top. I guess money can’t buy you love. It usually buys enough votes from the brothers, but not this time. Maybe Rahm should have gotten a few more dead voters to vote. It worked for JFK. This is another reflection of the changing mood in this country. Eight years ago, Rahm would have garnered 90% of the vote. Today he got half that amount. Times they are a changing.

Forced into runoff against Garcia, hoarse Rahm says ‘We have a little bit further to go’

Posted: 02/24/2015, 07:44pm |
Mayor Rahm Emanuel speaks to supporters Tuesday night at Plumbers Hall. | Richard A. Chapman/Sun-Times

For Rahm Emanuel, Tuesday’s mayoral election was the political equivalent of Groundhog Day: six more weeks of campaigning.

With 97 percent of the precincts counted, Emanuel had 45.3 percent to 33.9 percent for his top challenger Jesus “Chuy” Garcia. That’s 4.5 percent short of the 50 percent-plus-one vote that the mayor needs to avoid an April 7 runoff against Garcia. Millionaire businessman Willie Wilson was running third with 10.5 percent, followed by Ald. Bob Fioretti (2nd) with 7.4 percent and William “Dock” Walls with 2.7 percent.

The 34 percent turnout — down from 42.5 percent four years ago — should have benefited the incumbent with the $15 million warchest and the most sophisticated get-out-the-vote operation. But it was not enough to spare Emanuel from the political embarrassment of a runoff and a grueling Round 2.

Despite an 11th-hour in-person endorsement from President Barack Obama that Emanuel turned into a closing campaign commercial, Wilson got just enough of the African-American vote to deny the mayor a second term outright.

Garcia also appeared to be doing considerably better than final polling suggested.

Emanuel addressed his supporters shortly before 9:30 p.m. and tried to put the best possible face on an embarrassing situation.

“Thank you, Chicago. We’ve  come a long way, and we have a little bit further to go,” Emanuel said.

“To those who voted for us, I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart. For those who voted for someone else, I hope to earn your support.”

Still hoarse from a severe cold that hit him in the final days of the campaign, Emanuel congratulated Garcia for a “good race” and called him a “good man” with whom he looks forward to debating the issues in the weeks ahead. Then, he braced his supporters for the grueling, six-week spring ahead.

“To those who are gathered here tonight and throughout the city, you have worked hard. I want you to take a moment to celebrate what we have accomplished over the last four years. Take stock in it, and let us double down because, tomorrow morning, I’ll be seeing you at the L stops as I have every morning,” the mayor said.

“We will get back out there talking  to our friends and families and neighbors as they make a critical choice about who has the strength, who has the leadership, who has the ideas to move this great city forward so we can secure the future of this great city for our children.”

A triumphant Garcia followed the mayor to the podium, to the chants of “Chuy, Chuy.”

Mayoral candidate Jesus "Chuy" Garcia addressed supporters at Alhambra Palace Restaurant. | Ashlee Rezin/for Sun-Times Media

“So, nobody thought we’d be here tonight. They wrote us off. They said we didn’t have a chance. They said we didn’t have any money while they spent millions attacking us. Well, we’re still standing. We’re still running and we’re gonna win,” Garcia said.

“Today, we the people have spoken. Not the people with the money and the power and the connections. Not the giant corporations. The big-money special interests. The hedge funds and Hollywood celebrities who poured tens of millions of dollars into the mayor’s campaign. They all had their say. They’ve had their say for too long. But today, the rest of us had something to say.”

Garcia said he had just gotten off the phone with Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis, who “sends her love” and said, “Tell them this is about the new democracy.”

Lewis persuaded Garcia to run in her place after she was diagnosed with brain cancer.

Then, Garcia framed the race ahead as a classic battle between the haves and have-nots.

“We’ve got six weeks of hard work ahead of us and believe me, these big-money interests are going to throw everything they got at us. They run this town and they’re not gonna give up easy. But we’re gonna fight and we’re gonna work hard and we’re gonna win. We’re gonna keep this city together,” he said.

Garcia’s campaign manager, Andrew Sharp, added, “There’s a real hunger for change in Chicago. There are tens of thousands of voters in Chicago who came out today and voted for change. The city is not working for ordinary people,” Sharp said.

Asked how Garcia could be outspent 12-to-1 and still force a runoff, Sharp said, “In the words of the Beatles, ‘Money can’t buy you love.’’

If there was any doubt Emanuel’s decision to close a record,50 public schools had alienated black voters, it was erased by the ward-by-ward vote totals.

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card802
card802

What’s hilarious is the guy that rham will have the run off with has the backing of all the unions.

rham has big money backing, the immigrant has big union backing, 50/50 choice, 100% chance of total city failure.

HaHaHaHAHAHA!!!

Stucky

Evil White Trash, a Spic, and a Nigger are running for mayor of Chicago? That won’t end well for Chicago99444 no matter who wins.

Chicago999444
Chicago999444

No, it won’t, but I’m going to have to choose the lesser of two evils in the runoff (the “Nigger” is out of the race, we’re down to 2 candidates in the runoff) and I’m afraid that the lesser of two evils is the Evil White Trash…. who has at least held the line on property taxes.

Garcia, the other choice, is the tool of the civil service unions, and has the enthusiastic endorsement of CTU president Karen Lewis, enough said.

So, what choice do I have, really?

The incument doornob alderwoman in my ward got 64% of the vote, while across the city, incumbents remained in place or ran unopposed. However, the excellent guy in the 46th Ward, who IMO has done an excellent job of de-slumifying Uptown Chicago and has closed down some of the most noxious apartment buildings, is facing a very popular challenger in a runoff who frankly does not have nearly so much good to say for herself.

Thinker

I’m in the 46th ward… can’t say I agree with how great Cappleman is, particularly when he doesn’t bother to attend community meetings and when he DOES show up, doesn’t have any idea what’s going on and refuses to answer questions. Of course, Amy Crawford doesn’t look any better.

On the mayoral race, I commented the other day about how the [non]-joke is that “these are the only contenders we can come up with??” No one wants Rahm back, but Garcia is so far left he scares even the most liberal Chicagoans. Which is why only 30% of the population turned out to vote, one of the lowest participation rates ever.

Now, if we were REALLY serious about quality government, we’d be talking about going back to the drawing board and getting some quality candidates to run. But that will never happen.

Mopan
Mopan

Bad day for Israel

ASIG
ASIG

Hell of a system we have. Always trying to choose which is the least worse.

pauncho
pauncho

Jesus 1 Pharisees 0

Chicago999444
Chicago999444

As I remember too well how the 46th was run before, I have to give Cappleman my grudging approval, mainly because he has managed to shut down some of the most noisome slum buildings in the ward, such as the fetid Lawrence House, that was the locus of much of the ward’s crime for over 20 years.

However, there are, at my last count, about 50 (at least) really bad buildings around there that are thoroughly infested with gangbangers and other lowlife types, and many have special protection by law, such as the wire-cage SRO on Wilson that cannot by law be converted to any other use.

Additionally, the ward is burdened with more than its fair share of social services for troubled populations- in other words, the kind of people you don’t want in your neighborhood.

Cappelman has a mess to clean up that it took 70 years to create. After WW2, all the tens of thousands of uneducated rural peasants, both black and white, who migrated to the city during the war to work the high-wage war production jobs, were suddenly rudderless when those jobs disappeared at the end of the war, and Uptown was suddenly burdened with 10s of thousands of almost illiterate and extremely badly behaved “hillbillies”. After their sons and daughters grew up and assimilated into the general population and removed themselves to the newly-fashionable burbs, this formerly “hot” area started to deteriorate, its dozens of hotels becoming flophouses. And when leftist poverty-pimp and former SDS member Helen Schiller became alderman in the 80s, the area slid right off the cliff. It is going to take a long, long time to clean up the damage of the past 50 or 60 years, never mind the past 28. There is a lot of “process” involved- I mean, you can’t just give every lowlife in the nabe a 24 hour vacate notice to clear the ef out and be out by sundown. You have to do it using legal processes, with leftist groups fighting you every step of the way.

Chicago999444
Chicago999444

And, yes, Garcia scares the shit out of me. Karen Lewis’ endorsement speaks for itself.

So, I guess I have to take Rahm.

We need to find someone else and start grooming him or her. But, though I know many LIbertarians, I know of none that even wants to run for alderman. And, frankly, I’d rather see a few Libertarian alderman who could at least challenge the status quo and get council wars going again. Our city council has turned into nothing but a box full of rubber stamps.

This is the problem with the Libertarians- they all want to go for the high profile top offices. President. Governor. Vice President. Well, that is not how it is done. You must build a “base” first. You must get your people into the lower level offices, and start building networks. And don’t even get me started on how Libertarians run a campaign- you are not going to unseat a 4-term incumbent alderman by sending polite emails. You must raise hell and get publicity. You must also pay your dues in between elections by being out there, going to all the public meetings, getting out to talk to local residents, and helping with local problems. When a voter gets into the booth and sees a guy who has been in office 20 years and who helped his kid get a job, and another candidate he never heard of, who do you think he will choose. Judging by the way my accountant boyfriend and his buddies always talked about city politics, people in most cities vote very heavily on friendship and familiarity, which is too bad. Most denizens have very little idea of the issues that affect them directly and catastrophically, until the disasters are written into law, like the parking meter deal.

AC
AC

Apparently, having Obama as an ex-boyfriend no longer carries quite the cachet with the voters it once did.

Anonymous
Anonymous

Article-Obama and Emanuel: Members of same gay bath house in Chicago

President Obama and his chief of staff Rahm Emanuel are lifetime members of the same gay bath house in uptown Chicago, according to informed sources in Chicago’s gay community, as well as veteran political sources in the city.

The bath house, Man’s Country, caters to older white men and it has been in business for some 30 years and is known as one of uptown Chicago’s “grand old bathhouses.” WMR was told by sources who are familiar with the bath house that it provides one-year “lifetime” memberships to paying customers and that the club’s computerized files and pre-computer paper files, include membership information for both Obama and Emanuel. The data is as anonymized as possible for confidentiality purposes. However, sources close to “Man’s Country” believe the U.S. Secret Service has purged the computer and filing cabinet files of the membership data on Obama and Emanuel.

El Siete
El Siete

We Mexicans always shoot ourselves in the dick, Cisneros in SA – brought down by a white bitch. Villaraigosa in LA – brought down by a brown bitch. Pussy seems to be our kryptonite.

I don’t care about this election except for the fact that I hope Rahm loses. Lose, motherfucker, lose! What good is it to keep the streets clear of snow when they are full of blood?

Chicago999444
Chicago999444

El Siete, do you think that Garcia is going to succeed where Rahm did not?

The only way that we’re going to reduce crime is by reducing the number of low-lifes living in the city. And I don’t see Garcia doing that. I see him doing the opposite. I see him sponsoring more “affordable” (i.e. project Section 8) housing, and neighbors being less able to keep it out of their neighborhoods. This will be especially destructive to middle class black neighborhoods that are fighting to maintain their quality of life. I have a black friend in Woodlawn who, with her other fellow homeowners, is now fighting to keep a non-profit from acquiring property in her nabe in order to turn it into “affordable” housing for “challenged” populations, because she knows exactly what kind of people will be inhabiting it, and as it is, black people like her get “guilted” by white liberals and black race hustlers into acquiescing to projects that will harm them greatly.

Garcia’s socialistic mentality is the cause of our problems with crime and blight, so expect things to get worse, not better, if he is elected.

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